Search Results

Sort by

AeroVonics LLC, an aerospace startup based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has received Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certification for its initial launch product: a two-inch, twelve-function flight avionics instrument for light general aviation aircraft.

The United States Air Force’s 412th Test Wing’s Emerging Technologies (ET) Combined Test Force (CTF) completed the first flight test of Johns Hopkins University’s Testing of Autonomy in Complex Environments (TACE) system. As “middleware,” TACE serves as an “autonomy watchdog,” monitoring commands sent to an aircraft’s autopilot software from its autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) computer and transmitting autopilot information such as position, speed, and orientation back to the AI.

Newer, more capable fifth-generation aircraft platforms and systems are outgrowing even the largest U.S. Air Force training ranges – and the service believes modern simulators and virtual reality may be the answer.

The aging Lockheed C-130 Hercules military transport platform is used by numerous countries for military and government logistics. The aircraft first flew in 1954, and in order to stay relevant, Collins Aerospace has developed a Flight2 aftermarket avionic solution to upgrade communications, navigation, surveillance, and air traffic management (CNS/ATM) capabilities. Collins’ latest customer, the Portuguese Air Force, will use Flight2 to upgrade avionics and enable their fleet of C-130H aircraft to communicate in next generation airspace.

Pilatus Aircraft Ltd. of Stans, Switzerland has awarded a long-term multi-year contract to Abu Dhabi-based Rockford Xellerix for the assembly of wire looms and cable harnesses for the Pilatus PC-24 light business jet.

Curtiss-Wright Corporation’s Fortress line of combined cockpit voice recorders (CVRs) and flight data recorders (FDRs) are now have European Technical Standard Order (ETSO) approval. The devices, commonly referred to as “black boxes,” will surpass the requirements of an upcoming 2021 European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) mandate that requires CVRs are capable of recording for up to 25 hours per flight.

As mobility software becomes increasingly complex and connected, so does the risk of human error and system safety. To combat this, New York-based software company AdaCore will work with Nvidia Corporation of Santa Clara, California to apply open-source Ada and SPARK programming languages for select software security firmware elements in highly-complex, safety-critical systems like Nvidia’s DRIVE AGX automated and autonomous vehicle solutions.

The AS2 from Aerion in Reno, Nevada, will be the first supersonic business jet to market, Boeing officials in Chicago predict. Boeing (NYSE:BA) is providing engineering, industrial, and financial resources in partnership with Aerion to accelerate technology development and aircraft design, with the goal of bringing supersonic air travel to new markets.

Aerospace and defense, industrial automation and robotics, rail transportation, and other organizations which often struggle to support long-life platforms and systems stand to benefit from a new approach to obsolete and end-of-life (EOL) components. GDCA Inc. in Livermore, California, is working with Abaco Systems Inc. in Huntsville, Alabama, “to provide a sustainment path for customers with very long equipment life cycles,” GDCA CEO Ethan Plotkin explains.

The X-59 utilizes a long and slender airframe to achieve supersonic speeds without causing a high decibel sonic boom. The unconventional design precludes the use of a forward-looking window or viewport. Collins Aerospace is providing a dual multi-spectral enhanced vision system to give pilots a forward view of the airspace.

Hardware and software engineers at AVIO, a global aerospace company engaged in the construction and development of space launchers and solid and liquid propulsion systems for space travel, with facilities in Italy, France, and French Guyana are actively enhancing the design of the Vega space launcher, with a focus on evolving the design with enhanced avionics and propulsion technologies while also maximizing subsystem reuse and reorganizing production processes for a more efficient production chain.

Software engineers engaged in the construction and development of space launchers and solid and liquid propulsion systems for space travel at AVIO – a global aerospace company with five facilities in Italy, France, and French Guyana – are leveraging the GNAT Pro Assurance and GNATemulator from AdaCore, a provider of software development and verification tools, with headquarters in Paris and New York to develop and expedite testing of safety-critical, on-board software for the Vega C launcher.

Mobility engineers and executives at Bell Helicopter, a Textron Inc. (NYSE:TXT) company, in Fort Worth, Texas, are developing new concepts of mobility to make moving people and products more efficient and effective – and launching urban air mobility (UAM) innovations, including the Bell Nexus air taxi design, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week. They envision and are helping to enable a fleet of on-demand, quiet vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) aircraft capable of safely whisking passengers over traffic and across urban landscapes by the mid-2020s.

SAE International, a global association committed to being the ultimate knowledge source for mobility engineering, is bringing together subject-matter experts from across the globe for the first SAE International Aerospace Japan Symposium, held November 29 and 30 in conjunction with Japan International Aerospace Exhibition 2018 at Tokyo Big Sight convention center in Tokyo.

In recent years, ARM processors have made a quiet, understated entry into the aerospace and defense market. With a well-established reputation in commercial markets for bringing high performance to low-power mobile devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and wearables, it’s no surprise that ARM’s potential was recognized in an industry where size, weight, and power (SWaP) constraints heavily influence technology selection.